‘I must say, I’m surprised at Freddie. I’ve always thought him a very correct man,’ said Belle.
‘I’ve always thought him a very cold man,’ Evelyn added.
‘He warms up on the golf course,’ Bill interjected. ‘There’s nothing cold about him when he hits a hole in one!’
Evelyn rolled her eyes. ‘Right, I’ve had enough of this music. I’m going home. Bill?’
He sighed his displeasure, but knew it wasn’t worth arguing with his wife. ‘I’ve told Lucy to be home by eleven.’
‘Then you’ve got no reason to doubt that she’ll be safely tucked up in bed by five past,’ said Belle.
Belle enjoyed a good party. Her husband, John, was a great raconteur and loved nothing better than to hold an audience with his stories, usually grossly exaggerated. She wandered around the fire, talking to friends, while John held a small group in his thrall, laughing uproariously at his own punchlines. She watched the young dancing in the golden glow of the flames. They looked like savages, jumping up and down on the sand in bare feet, their naked limbs flailing about to the almost hypnotic rhythm of the drums. Her own children were in their twenties now with families of their own. She was relieved she no longer had to worry about her daughters. It was a hard time to be young, she reflected.
She remained at the party until midnight. By then most of the grown-ups had gone home, leaving only John, with a few of his closest friends, laughing at old stories told a hundred times before. By then the music had stopped. The boys now lounged on the sand with Trixie, Suzie and a few other girls, drinking beer and smoking what smelt suspiciously like weed. Belle looked a little closer. At first she didn’t believe the evidence of her own eyes. No, surely not, she thought. It was way past her curfew. But yes, indeed, there was no mistaking the pale hair and pale skin of Lucy Durlacher.
Belle was at heart a good person and very aware of her reputation as such. However, Evelyn had offended her tonight. She had known Evelyn all her life, they had been at high school together, and she was well aware and endlessly tolerant of her faults. Yet tonight her snobbishness had grated. Evelyn had never met those boys and the Valentines might not be ‘top drawer’, as the English would say, but they were kind, good people – Belle was particularly fond of Grace. So, instead of doing her duty as a friend to Evelyn, she walked away with John, leaving Lucy on the sand to smoke and flirt into the early hours of the morning.
The small group of young people remained by the fire, which was now reduced to crimson embers revived every now and then by the wind that swept in off the sea. Surrounded by empty beer bottles and cigarette butts they laughed and chatted beneath the full moon, oblivious of the time that ticked towards dawn. The gentle sound of the ocean lulled them into the realm of the unreal, as the waves washed diamonds onto the beach.
George and Lucy sat a little apart from the rest, their heads together, her hair now falling down her back like that of a sleek mermaid. She looked quite pretty in the semi-darkness, her skin having taken on a silvery translucence. They talked in low voices, punctuated by her occasional soft laughter. Trixie inhaled a spliff then passed it on to Suzie, who sat cross-legged beside Ben. ‘Mission accomplished,’ she said to her friend, nodding in the direction of George and Lucy.
‘A job well done,’ Suzie replied. ‘Now it’s my turn,’ she added, passing the spliff to Ben.
Jasper put his hand around the back of Trixie’s neck, underneath her hair, and pulled her close to kiss her. ‘You look beautiful tonight. Did I tell you?’ he whispered.
‘No, you didn’t,’ she replied softly.
‘Well, you do.’
‘Perhaps there’s a dune we can go hide behind,’ she suggested, feeling emboldened by the alcohol and cannabis.
‘I like the sound of that.’ He kissed her neck. ‘I’m not sure I can stand sitting next to you for much longer.’
‘But if we leave, we’ll break up the party.’
‘If we leave, the party will get going,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
They stood up, but none of the others seemed to notice. He took her hand and they wandered up the beach, into the darkness. They fell onto the sand and began to kiss. Trixie felt the warm sensation of desire creeping over her limbs and writhed like a pleasure-seeking cat. Jasper swept her hair off her face and buried himself in her neck. He found her mouth and began to kiss her more ardently as his thumb searched for her breasts, which rose and fell with her excited breath. Trixie was not an innocent; she had lost her inhibitions with the various lovers she had taken since she had slept with her first at the tender age of seventeen. But none of them had aroused her like Jasper. Their chemistry was the perfect blend, rendering every touch exquisite, and she thought she would die for his teasing and slow-stroking. He caressed her belly, causing desperate flutters of anticipation beneath, and then up her thighs and under her skirt, where they traced the cotton of her panties. The flutters in her belly intensified with impatience, and she opened her thighs without reservation, inviting him in.
They made love for a long while, neither of them aware nor much interested in the time. When at last they lay sated and laughing at their daring, they were interrupted by a loud squawking coming from further up the beach. At first they thought it was a seagull, or some other bird in distress. But when they rolled onto their stomachs and looked over the dune to the remains of the fire, they saw the two couples sitting up and staring at a woman with wild hair, in a dressing gown, gesticulating in fury. ‘Oh my God,’ Trixie hissed. ‘That’s Lucy’s mother!’
‘Are you serious?’ Jasper checked his watch. In the moonlight he could just make out the hands. It was half past three in the morning.
‘I’m telling you. That’s Evelyn Durlacher with her hair standing on end!’
Jasper laughed. ‘Oh dear, poor Lucy’s been caught in flagrante!’
‘Her mother’s crazy!’
‘She looks crazy!’ Jasper agreed. ‘I’m glad I’m not on the receiving end of that.’
They watched as Lucy was unceremoniously pulled up the sand by the arm. Trixie imagined Evelyn had seen all the empty beer bottles. She wondered what else she had seen. Had Lucy and George been making out? It was fortunate that she and Jasper were hidden behind a dune; she couldn’t afford to be in any more trouble. ‘I think you’d better walk me home,’ she said, standing up and wriggling into her panties. When she looked back at the fire she saw that George had disappeared, leaving Ben and Suzie to resume from where they had left off. She took a moment to savour the sight of her friend being kissed by the man of her dreams. She smiled at the thought of their tour. It was all going to be such fun.
Jasper picked up his guitar. ‘I’ve written a song for you,’ he said, strumming a few chords. ‘Do you want to hear it?’
‘I’d love to. I’ve never inspired a song before.’ Trixie sat on the dune and hugged her legs. ‘What’s it called?’
‘Trixie,’ he replied and laughed at himself.
‘I love it already,’ she enthused.
‘Sometimes simple is best.’ He began to play. She watched, eyes shining with emotion, as he sang to her softly. In that moment, as he sang of longing and desire, she believed she loved him more than she could ever love anyone.
When he finished, he looked at her dreamily. ‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘It’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.’
‘Really?’ He was incredulous. ‘Are you just saying that because it’s about you?’
‘Well, you were truly inspired when you wrote it.’
He laughed and the lines creased around his mouth and eyes. ‘You’re not wrong, Trixie Valentine.’
‘I think I should be your band mascot.’
‘I would be honoured,’ he replied, standing up and slinging the strap of his guitar over his shoulder. He picked up his jacket. ‘Now I’ll walk you home.’
‘Jasper,’ she began.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I come with you in
the fall?’
‘Will you parents let you?’
‘If they don’t, I’ll run away with you,’ she replied confidently, gazing at him with a starry look in her eyes.
He frowned. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘I’ve never been more sure of anything,’ she replied, taking his hand. ‘You know, I’d run away with you in a heartbeat.’
‘Then you can be my mascot and I’ll compose songs for you,’ he said. ‘All the greatest songs have been inspired by love.’
She looked at him steadily. ‘Do you love me?’ she asked.
He nodded slowly. ‘I think I do, Trixie.’
‘You think you do?’
‘No, I know I do,’ he said with certainty. ‘I’m just surprised by it, that’s all. This is a first time for me.’
‘And me,’ she replied, suddenly bashful. ‘But I know I love you, too.’
They walked up the beach hand in hand, feeling unexpectedly vulnerable for having disclosed the contents of their hearts. A shyness had come over them which, as well as being unfamiliar, left them both feeling a little afraid. Suddenly the playfulness of their relationship was overshadowed by the very adult implications of love.
When they reached Trixie’s house, their parting kiss was almost awkward. ‘It was fun tonight,’ she said, grinning at him in the hope of recapturing their earlier light-heartedness.
‘I had fun, too,’ he agreed, smiling down at her.
‘Now I’m going to scale the wall and climb in through my bedroom window so I don’t wake my parents.’
‘Are you sure? Don’t fall and kill yourself. I’ve just found you.’ The caring tone in his voice made her feel cherished and her heart was once again filled with bubbles.
‘I won’t,’ she replied. ‘Now watch how it’s done.’ She began to climb with enthusiasm, keen to show off her skill. She reached her bedroom window and slipped inside. Then she leaned out and waved down at him. ‘Sleep well!’ she hissed. He waved back and blew her a kiss. She watched him walk off into the dark, her heart bursting with happiness. ‘He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me . . .’ And she closed the curtains and fell into bed.
Chapter 8
The following morning it rained. Tekanasset was shrouded in a thick white cloud that drenched the island, washing it clean. Trixie would have liked to sleep in, but her father was always very strict about breakfast. The family convened in the kitchen at eight, no matter what. When she was small her mother would cook eggs, bacon and toast – a very English breakfast. Now there were pancakes, too, because Trixie had rebelled against her parents’ determination to hold onto their roots and insisted on having an American breakfast like all her friends. That meant pancakes with maple syrup.
When she appeared with long, dishevelled hair falling over eyes smudged with kohl and full of sleep, her father looked her over with displeasure. ‘Trixie, you’re a sorry sight this morning.’
Grace agreed. ‘Darling, go and wash your face and brush your hair. You can’t come down to breakfast like this!’
But Trixie flopped into a chair and poured herself a cup of tea. ‘I’m tired,’ she complained. ‘Come on, one morning without washing my face won’t kill anybody.’
‘It’s a matter of discipline,’ said her father, closing the newspaper.
‘Yeah, yeah, civilization is about standards. I’ve heard it a hundred times. Let’s just lower the standard this once, please.’ She added a spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk to her tea and stirred it sleepily.
‘So, did you have a good time last night?’ Grace asked, placing a plate of eggs in front of her husband, in the knowledge that food, more than anything else, would distract him from his daughter’s lack of discipline.
‘It was really fun. Jasper played and we all danced. The grown-ups disappeared pretty quickly after that.’
Grace laughed. ‘I don’t suppose their music is for us.’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘I think you’d like it, actually, Mom. You’re never one to follow the crowd. In fact, I think you’d pretend to like it even if you didn’t, just to be different.’
Trixie sipped her tea thoughtfully. She wanted to tell them about Evelyn Durlacher coming for Lucy at three in the morning, but didn’t want them to know that she had been out at that time, too. After all, her curfew was midnight. Fortunately her father was a deep sleeper and she could rely on her mother, if she had heard her creep in, to turn a deaf ear. Trixie wondered how they’d take the news that she was going to go on tour with the boys in the fall.
She watched her father tuck into his breakfast. His face was serious, his back rigid, his shoulders straight – everything about him exuded discipline. Sometimes she wondered what he had been like before the war. She never noticed his eyepatch or the scar down his face, because she was so used to them. But now she looked at him with the eyes of a young woman in love for the first time and wondered what it was about her solemn, distant father that her mother had fallen for. What had he been like as a young man? Had he been playful like Jasper? Or had he always been so humourless and inflexible? She looked at her mother, making pancakes at the stove. She was a curvaceous, sensual woman with deep, dreamy eyes and a sweet, kind face. She loved novels, romantic movies, flowers and bees. Her father hated bees and cared little for flora and fauna. He loved golf and books on military history. He liked things to be neat and tidy. He liked routine. Her mother was by nature as carefree as a bird. As she drank her tea Trixie wondered how on earth they had lived together all these years, having so little in common.
‘Mom, what was it about Dad that you fell in love with?’ Trixie asked her mother when her father had left for work.
Grace sat down and put her elbows on the table. She rested her chin on her hands. ‘Your father was my best friend,’ she began softly. ‘We’d known each other all our lives.’
‘But what was he like?’ Trixie persisted.
‘He was very handsome. He was cheerful and mischievous and full of fun.’ She said those words with wistfulness, reflecting on what he had brought to the marriage and then taken away.
Trixie pulled a face. ‘Dad, cheerful and mischievous!’ She laughed sceptically. ‘Are you sure we’re talking about the same person? So what changed?’
‘The war,’ her mother replied.
‘Really? Can a person change so much?’
‘He’s still my Freddie underneath,’ said Grace, a little defensively.
‘Does it make you sad?’ Trixie asked, trying to imagine how she’d feel if Jasper fought in a war and returned home a different man.
Grace stirred milk into her coffee. She didn’t want to answer Trixie’s question directly. It wasn’t right for children to know too much about their parents. ‘I’m not sad, darling. How can I be sad when I have you?’ Her smile was so tender that Trixie felt her heart flood with guilt. She smiled back and picked up the maple syrup.
Later Trixie went upstairs to change for work. She had to be at Captain Jack’s at eleven. Grace walked over to Big’s house with a basket of honey. It was not far from Sunset Slip if she took the path over the bluff. It had stopped raining and the sun had come out. Grace could make out the pointed gables of the house long before she reached it, like the sails of a massive ship in dock. So large and imposing was it that sailors used it as a guide for navigating their way to land. Being the first home to be built on the island, it enjoyed the very best location, on the eastern side, with a three-hundred-degree view of the ocean. It boasted the largest lawns and gardens of any house on Tekanasset, and was sheltered from the wind by tall trees as ancient as the house, and wild woodland where once they hunted boar, brought over from Europe for sport. Now there were no boar, just a pack of dogs, a giant cat called Mr Doorwood, a few exotic-looking hens and a cockerel that crowed on the henhouse every morning at dawn.
Grace rang the bell and spoke her name into the intercom. The grand gates opened in a suitably stately fashion and she stepped onto the gravel driveway w
ith a sigh of pleasure. Through the trees she could see the bright-blue shutters and white porch of Big’s magnificent house. Grace had planted the hydrangeas, the climbing roses and shrubs that gave the house a somewhat Cornish appeal, and created herbaceous borders that lined the lawns on the other side because Big had wanted a quintessentially English garden. Grace had learned all about horticulture from her father. Working among the flowers and creatures he so loved kept her close to his memory.
She found Big playing croquet on the glistening lawn with a trio of ancient friends in tennis shoes and white hats. When she saw Grace, Big waved vigorously. ‘Grace, come and watch me win.’ She lined up her mallet and sent her opponent’s ball flying across the grass. ‘Sorry, Betty-Ann, needs must.’
‘I’ll accept defeat with good grace,’ Betty-Ann replied, walking over to stand by her ball. Grace sat beneath the veranda and watched them finish. She marvelled at the way Big managed to play croquet, using her mallet as a walking stick. The butler brought her a glass of lemon juice and she stroked Mr Doorwood, who had taken it upon himself to jump onto her lap. She swept her eyes over the garden in satisfaction. The borders were bright with the flowers she had planted. It was fortunate that Big had a couple of full-time gardeners to keep them all weeded and trimmed.
When the game was over, Big and Betty-Ann joined her at the table, while the two other friends shook hands briefly with Grace then left for some other pressing engagement. ‘If Mr Doorwood is a nuisance, just throw him off,’ said Big, sinking into a chair with a sigh.
‘I like him,’ Grace replied.
‘He’s enormous,’ said Betty-Ann. ‘You must have giant mice beneath your floorboards.’
‘He’s a terrible mouser,’ Big complained, pouring herself and Betty-Ann some juice. ‘The laziest cat on the island. Believe me, the mice have it good over here.’ She turned to Grace. ‘I suppose you’ve heard about Lucy Durlacher.’
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